


the Nancy chronicles

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Sentient Atlantis, Stranger in a Strange Land
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-27
Updated: 2007-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:15:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy Clayton has a hobby of diving off of high pedestals into the unknown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the Nancy chronicles

**Author's Note:**

> [Cast of Characters/the Big List of OCs (because there are more than seven people in Atlantis and they all have names)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/372765)

> BECKETT: Look at this! Four years’ relief work in the Sudan and Ethiopia; graduate studies at John Hopkins _and_ Harvard; half a dozen research grants – oh, and she also enjoys judo, horseback riding, origami and something called BASE jumping.  
>  WEIR: Parachuting from cliffs and tall buildings.  
>  BECKETT: Oh, of _course_!  
>  WEIR: You said you wanted the best.

\--"Intruder"

 

 

The offer came pretty much out of the blue.

She'd been back only ten days from her vacation -- a week in Norway climbing up and jumping off the Lynsefjord after spending thrice that racing to complete two articles and a conference paper proposal -- when there was a knock on her office door and an Air Force officer asking if she'd be interested in being considered for a research opportunity that, quote, would blow her mind.

Several questions immediately sprung to her as-yet-unblown mind and, since Nancy had never been one with an especially good brain-to-mouth filter, she went ahead and asked them: who are you, is this legitimate, what kind of mind-blowing, and what does the _Air Force_ want with an endocrinologist? She wasn't willing to work on biological or chemical weapons and... "You don't want me to work on that gay bomb thing, do you?"

"If you ask the Marines, ma'am, we perfected that years ago," Major Alterman assured her without missing a beat.

After assuring her that she'd be required to do no work on any munitions, experimental or otherwise, and that the USAF employed all sorts of people who had nothing to do with airplanes and war, he left her with a folder full of paperwork and forty-eight hours to decide if she wanted to fill it out. He also left her with his card in case she had any questions and assured her that there would be some.

In the folder was a form letter explaining that she was getting this packet because of the promise she had shown in her field combined with a proven sense of adventure and that she'd been recommended as a viable candidate by persons of merit. Nancy translated this to mean that she had been deemed available because she had been hopping from grant to grant instead of settling down at some nice tenured faculty position where it would cost them a bloody fortune to pry her free. As for who could have possibly given her name to the Air Force, she had no idea; nobody she knew had had any direct -- or even obviously indirect -- connections to any military branch. Who in academia did?

There was more about the project, but it wasn't terribly informative beyond assurances that everything was legal, within the scope of her existing research, and she would be well compensated. Beyond that there was nothing more than she'd been told and Major Alterman had been necessarily vague -- "even the name of the program requires SCI clearance, ma'am. Going around cold-calling folks is not exactly how we'd like to go about recruiting."

What the Air Force wanted from her was a little clearer -- a one-year blind commitment, possibly starting immediately upon hiring, was required for candidacy and she could expect a final decision within two weeks. All expenses incurred by the sudden move would be covered by the USAF, which was both reasonable and maybe a little fishy. Nothing moved that fast, Nancy knew, not academia and certainly not the government and her curiosity was piqued. Obviously this was something big if they were going around hand-delivering applications with less than a month for a window of consideration and offering to pay for her inconvenience.

The rest of the packet was more or less conventional: Please submit a current CV, two recent articles, and a brief summary of ongoing research. Please confirm that you are physically capable of worldwide deployment, even to remote areas -- and Nancy did not miss that the usual paragraphs on how accommodations would be made in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act were missing. There were no requests for references, but there was a biographical questionnaire with space to answer, among other things, how she'd handled interacting with different cultures and if she'd ever been in prolonged danger. (Four years of running around the Sudan and Ethiopia probably more than qualified if residency spent in the glorious area around Hopkins' Medical Center didn't.)

Trying to imagine what the Air Force wanted her for ended up consuming most of her daily allotment of idle speculation -- there were tests to run, editors to bother, grad students to berate, supplies to steal (and steal back), and she really needed to go food shopping since she'd been back for more than a week and was still living on canned tuna and the veggie burgers she'd stockpiled in her freezer the last time they were on sale. The problem was that her imagination really wasn't built to conceive of what the Air Force actually did besides fly planes. She'd never lived near a base and, apart from ogling the sailors during some event in Boston, was pretty sure she'd never actually interacted with any military personnel.

Somewhere between the produce aisle -- who pays $6.99 a pound for crappy cherries? -- and picking up a couple of boxes of Count Chocula, she decided to apply. Diving headfirst into the unknown was pretty much her modus operandi anyway and her grant was up at the end of the academic year. She'd been applying for new ones for the last few months anyway, so one more really wouldn't make a difference. It might even give her leverage if she got an offer from somewhere else; eventually, she was going to have to get a real job and evidence of desirability would hopefully count for something.

* * *

  
"How are you doing, Doctor Clayton?"

Nancy looked up from her laptop, where she'd been reading over the confirmation that the USAF was footing the bill on the rest of her lease, to see Carson Beckett standing before her.

"I've not had a chance to speak with you since we've been underway," he went on, gesturing to ask if he could sit down at her table and she nodded her acceptance. "It's been a lot, I must imagine, and in such a short time."

They'd _left Earth_ a week ago -- something that she still couldn't wrap her mind around, along with aliens and wormholes and pretty much every other science fiction trope turning out to be true -- and she hadn't seen Beckett, her new boss, except in passing and during the every-other-day briefings and Welcome to the Stargate Program indoctrination lectures that broke up the primary and emergency care refresher courses all of Medical had to take because most of them hadn't been practitioners since residency or fellowship.

"I'm a little disappointed, honestly," she said, closing the top of the computer as he sat opposite to her. "I've been expecting things to be a little more... weird?"

A chuff of knowing laughter from Beckett, who so far had all of the early signs of being a great boss. He was humble and helpful and had quickly matched all of their faces to the names and photographs in the personnel files he'd clearly read; he seemed genuinely concerned for their welfare, solicitous of their needs, and that, perhaps even more than the fact that there were _aliens_ out there, made her wary. Or maybe the airman (air-woman?) had been right and she'd simply lucked out because he was just the anti-McKay. The Science personnel all wandered around looking slightly traumatized and nobody thought it was because the rules of physics had just been knocked sideways. Most of them -- at least the hard science types -- had been working at the SGC for a while and didn't have that excuse.

"I know we're on a spaceship and we're going to another galaxy and there are nasty aliens there who want to _eat us_ ," she went on, frowning because every time she said it aloud it sounded more bizarre than it had the last time, "but it doesn't feel like I'm on a spaceship. It feels like I'm in yet another building with no windows and crappy canned air. And all of the literature about Atlantis and the Pegasus Galaxy still seems a little fictional. I know it won't feel like that once we're there, but...."

But they hadn't even seen the outside of the spaceship they were riding in except in pictures, teleportation had been cool and scary in theory but a complete non-event in practice, and while there was an observation deck complete with cushy couches, they were in hyperspace and all they could see was some kind of kaleidoscopic acid-trip thing that was very similar to the lava lamp she'd had in college.

"Oh, it'll feel like that once we're there," Beckett assured her with a smile. "You _do_ get used to life in Atlantis and much of it will seem just like working a regular lab -- with tacky design; the Ancients were not what you'd call restrained with their architectural aesthetic -- but I don't know that anyone ever really loses the sense of strangeness. Certainly not after the first time you get out of the city. It's a very humbling moment to meet people from other worlds."

"I'm still working on meeting people from other departments," she said, since while they'd been given half a dozen lectures on how everyone in Pegasus was pretty much just like them -- Beckett had even shown them DNA comparisons -- the idea of meeting _aliens_ (even if it was the Earth people who were the aliens) was still in the 'not real yet' category.

Beckett was about to say something else, but suddenly a commotion could be heard from outside the mess, male shouts and the particular noise of lots of military boots on the ship's metal floors. The marines had been pretty much out of sight since they'd left Earth, kept away from the ship's general population either by design or coincidence, [but they'd been all over like cockroaches since yesterday evening.](http://miss-porcupine.livejournal.com/235417.html) Nancy had been startled once or twice -- the marines really weren't being stealthy, except when they were -- but had thus far remained unscathed. Which was more than could be said for Lori Grebner, her roommate, who had apparently been caught in a stampede on her way back from the showers.

"Oh, lord," Beckett sighed. "What are they up to now?"

Nancy suspected he wasn't talking about the marines.

* * *

  
The surprising banality of space travel was broken by the Wraith virus, but that, too, was as much whimper as bang.

Nancy, like almost everyone else, had slept through most of it. She'd been woken up by the announcement that the ship's computers were getting rebooted, but had dozed off again after the emergency lights had flickered off and the dim regular night-light had returned. There'd been some wackiness later in the morning with the door to their quarters being unable to open, but she and Lori had assumed that it was part of the glitch that had required the reboot and then the second reboot and they'd been freed by 0930 anyway. It was only afterward that they'd been told what had happened and, by that point, it had seemed a little pointless to freak out. Lori tried anyway, but Nancy simply dragged her down to the mess and fed her decaf coffee and dry toast until she calmed down.

However, the planned fly-by to let everyone see Atlantis from the air was canceled and nobody seemed too broken up by it.

The last days aboard ship were spent preparing for their arrival. The _Daedalus_ 's personnel were organizing the transportation of equipment and stowed personal baggage to the city, but individual departments were responsible for their own personnel and figuring out what to do with everyone and everything once it was in the city. As far as Nancy was concerned, that just meant that everyone from Medical had to be standing outside the transporter room at 1100 on Wednesday and should be prepared to identify and take possession of their stuff once they got beamed down.

Getting beamed down was about as exciting as getting beamed up -- which is to say it wasn't -- but the first view of Atlantis was far more impressive than the first view of the _Daedalus_ had been. They'd seen pictures and video footage, but none of that did justice to Atlantis's lobby illuminated by the sun.

"Wow," Nancy murmured, looking up at the awesome and gaudy (and awesomely gaudy) stained glass windows and soaring ceiling.

"So much better than working under a mountain," Bill Metzinger agreed.

Near and around them, marines were loading crates and boxes on to trolleys and handcarts and Nancy reluctantly returned her attention to her more immediate surroundings. She found her personal effects, the crates stickered liberally with penguins, and shoved the stack so that it was marginally less in the way of the bustling marines. She dropped her backpack on top and waited, which was what they'd been told to do by Carson. The entire space was a bit chaotic and Nancy frequently had to press up against her crates to keep from being trampled or run over; Science had already been beamed down and everyone already in the city seemed to know where they needed to be.

There were people standing up on the balcony and she watched as Carson greeted each one in turn. He didn't seem to know the marine too well, but he greeted the other doctor (probably the infamous Safir) with animated relief and touched his forehead to that of the tiny, majestic woman next to him who was very obviously not part of the expedition.

 _My first alien_ , Nancy mused.

"Doctor Clayton?"

She turned around and looked up at what was definitely not her first marine. "That's me."

"I'm here to move your gear up to your quarters, ma'am," the marine said as he easily slid the hand-truck underneath her stack of belongings. Between the truck and the tablet computer he was holding, he looked a lot like a camouflaged UPS guy.

Nancy plucked her backpack off of the top. "I hope you know where we're going, Sergeant, because I sure as hell don't."

Sergeant Horton did, thankfully. Her new home was much nicer than she'd expected, especially with the wall of windows that looked out on to the city and then the ocean beyond, but she didn't have too much time to linger. Carson had told them to verify they hadn't lost anything in transit and then show up at Medical because the unpacking there would take more than a week and no one would be getting any personal time until that was finished. With Sergeant Horton respectfully waiting outside in the hall, she broke the seals on her crates, eyeballed her belongings, and then got escorted to Medical, Sergeant Horton explaining all the way how the transporters (even more unexciting than the ones on the ship) worked.

Medical's treatment suite was... a mess. Very obviously not designed for its current use, the room had boxes piled everywhere, people milling and rushing around, raised voices and the occasional clatter of metal (or glass) hitting the floor. She was put to unpacking boxes of supplies under the guidance of Nurse Tomita, who either had no sense of humor or had lost it in the chaos. Getting ordered around and doing scutwork was kind of like being a med student again and Nancy, used to being the new person in a way she suspected some of her new colleagues weren't, got busy. After her portion of the supplies were dealt with, Tomita was nowhere to be found and so Nancy went to look for Carson to get her next assignment.

She never got to ask. Before she had even gotten close enough to get a word out, [a lot of marines came barreling in, shouting that some of their brethren were ill](http://miss-porcupine.livejournal.com/194588.html). The infirmary was instantly transformed from warehouse to emergency room, boxes swept off of beds and stethoscopes and ophthalmoscopes replacing manifest lists and plastic boxes in the hands of personnel.

She'd gotten a new diagnostic kit along with everything else needed for the transition back to patient care, but it was still packed in a crate in her apartment, so she ended up assisting the hastily-introduced Mike Abelard with the examination of the essentially non-responsive Sergeant Nordblum with borrowed equipment.

"Welcome to Atlantis, hunh?" Mike said as he used his pen light to check Nordblum's pupils. "Reilly? Did we unpack the new BP cuffs?"

Reilly, who was the biggest nurse Nancy had ever seen -- big enough that his scrubs actually fit him like clothes -- tossed over a BP cuff that was decidedly not new.

"I'll take that as a 'no,'" Mike said, then held it out to her. "Wanna do the honors while I unbury the cardiac monitor?"

By the time they finished with Nordblum, new marines were coming in and the same scene was getting repeated all over again, except this time with less free space to put the new arrivals. It was only the ones with the gene, they'd quickly realized, but they weren't quite sure what to do about that. Carson had sent for Colonel Sheppard, who now stood off to the side and out of the way, clearly concerned but waiting patiently.

Fingers snapping in front of her drew Nancy's attention.

"Which one are you?" Safir asked.

She introduced herself and was ordered to keep an eye on the young marine sitting nearby, a Sergeant Reletti, who thankfully seemed to be in better shape than most of the marines who'd been carried in -- he was aware of his surroundings and his equilibrium was only a little off. Patient handed over, Safir stalked off in the direction of Sheppard and the marines, bellowing for McKay, who'd just shown up.

Reletti was doing better than most of the others, but he still looked like he was teetering on the edge of either passing out or going catatonic the way several of the others had. Nancy kept the bedpan nearby in case he had to hurl, but mostly she just tried to keep him engaged; when she talked to him and when he had to answer, his eyes looked more focused and he swayed less. His answers were sometimes a bit loopy, but she suspected that had nothing to do with why he was here.

Distracting Reletti from whatever was going on in his head -- they'd spent a day's training on the Ancient gene and what it meant to people in Atlantis, but nothing like this was in the case files -- seemed the proper treatment, but requiring external stimulation on a permanent basis was simply not feasible long-term. And something still had to be done about the marines who were currently too far gone to reach.

Across the room, the argument among the mucky-mucks was in full roar; McKay had apparently known what would happen -- namely, this -- to anyone who hadn't been exposed to Ancient technology and hadn't said anything because he didn't want the marines breaking his toys. At least that's what Safir and Carson were saying. Sheppard was alternating between sharing in their fury and keeping them from actually doing anything to McKay.

She stopped paying attention when it became obvious that Sergeant Reletti couldn't hear them despite the fact that people back on _Earth_ might have been able to listen to the argument; she was still looking in his ears with a borrowed otoscope when Sheppard came over and, after verifying that nothing was wrong, she left him with his commanding officer. After that, Mike asked her to help him start prepping the marines for transport back to the _Daedalus_ , so she didn't seen what happened to Sergeant Reletti except that he wasn't one of the ones who'd gotten bounced back to the ship.

It wasn't until much later, after all of the marines were gone and they were writing up notes on the incident that it really hit that she'd just spent the afternoon treating marines who were having trouble because their _alien genes_ were making the city itself freak out and try to _talk to them_.

"I think I've finally realized I'm not in Kansas anymore," she told Mike.

"Just wait until you meet the flying monkeys," he replied, doing jazz hands at the laptop screen to make it process the data faster. "That'll have you reaching for the ruby slippers."

"Don't be scaring the new arrivals, Doctor Abelard," Carson chided as he walked past. "That's Jonathan's job."

* * *

Jonathan turned out to be both scarier than advertised and also completely not. He was really pretty awful the few times she'd seen him arguing with someone, but in every instance it had been over something she herself would have gotten pissed off about. The difference was that she would have (she hoped) dealt with it through means other than a shouting match in the middle of a public area. On the other hand, he never lashed out at her, was never anything but polite and, on the rare occasion she absolutely had to go to him for either a loan of equipment or a question, he was never anything but helpful. He'd been in charge while Carson had been on Earth and it showed. He wasn't _friendly_ , but he wasn't nasty (to her) either and he did have friends in Atlantis -- Carson apparently being first and foremost. Even if they didn't turn out to be anything close to friends, she figured she'd handle him just fine.

Which was more than she'd say for a couple of her other colleagues. Bill Metzinger's experience with the SGC had been a big selling point when they'd all been riding over on the _Daedalus_ , but he was no more a veteran of Atlantis than any of the other new arrivals and he could get off his high horse _any day now_.

Carson had been right about how Atlantis would seem mostly like Earth -- her lab space was full of Earth equipment, including the computer that required near-daily calls to IT until they finally swapped it out, she slept in a bed that had Earth sheets on an Earth mattress, and she ate mostly Earth food (although she'd been warned that that would start changing the longer the _Daedalus_ was gone). Life in Darfur had been more exotic and more dangerous, not that she was really complaining about the latter.

But he'd also been right that there were a million little things that kept her from ever forgetting that she was _in another galaxy_. The fact that days were longer than 24 hours, for instance, went beyond merely getting over the jetlag of going from Zulu time to Atlantis Standard. That they still had marines -- and occasionally civilian personnel -- coming in because they couldn't get the city to shut up and leave them alone was another thing. It hadn't taken very long at all for everyone in Medical to learn that Colonel Sheppard was _special_ when it came to Atlantis, but the city apparently was still pretty fond of everyone else who had the gene.

The way Atlantis -- the city itself and population therein -- was still recovering from the Wraith siege was very like what she had seen in her years of fieldwork and refugee relief efforts. The weapons might not have been same, but the principles were sadly familiar -- one group deciding that the other had no right to exist.

It had been a couple of months but Atlantis, both city and population, were still scarred and scared; there were holes that couldn't be filled by either the tons of building supplies they'd imported or with the new personnel. There were names Nancy learned not to mention except respectfully (and one she learned not to mention at all), places that she knew had been available to wander in that were not yet cleared, stories that should be listened to if they were offered but should never be requested. Atlantis in the first year, cut off from everything and everyone and the population left to fend for themselves, had been a far different place. She wasn't yet sure if she should be grateful or disappointed that she hadn't been there for that time. Pegasus was both amazing and terrifying, harsh in a way most everyone in the 'first world' on Earth forgot their own planet could be.

Here, however, it was pretty hard to forget. Certainly after Ronon arrived. At the time Nancy hadn't been off-world, hadn't been to the mainland, hadn't seen anyone stranger than Doctor Abruzzi doing handstands outside of the commissary, and hadn't met Teyla personally yet. So Ronon... Ronon was a shock. A feral man she could have dealt with -- it happened on Earth, even in the US -- but he wasn't feral. Getting there, but not really so far gone that his ingrained socialization was completely overwritten. It was the speculation about what had driven him to those depths that was so scary, the idea of becoming a training toy for such a ruthless people as the Wraith.... She understood why so many scientists in Atlantis didn't want to leave the city, even after it had been proven no safe haven.

She still signed up to go off-world as soon as she'd gotten the necessary clearance.

Going to the mainland to tend to the refugees came first, however. She was teamed up with Jonathan -- probably because he hadn't made her cry yet -- and they took a jumper driven by Colonel Sheppard and accompanied by Teyla, who insisted that Nancy take the shotgun seat so that she could look out the window.

Riding in a jumper was _nothing_ like riding in the _Daedalus_ and, even if it was only ocean outside, it was still all kinds of awesome. Both Teyla and Colonel Sheppard were pleased with her excitement, all the more so because Jonathan was sitting in his seat with his headphones on and his nose in a book that looked like pulp fiction from the cover, but it was in Hebrew so she had no idea.

"He was nose-to-the-glass his first time, too," Colonel Sheppard assured. "He just likes playing hard-to-get."

Sensing the attention, Jonathan looked up and glared.

Nancy wasn't sure what she had been expecting on the mainland, but what she got wasn't it. Teyla had told stories of her people and the settlements for most of the trip, Colonel Sheppard butting in with asides and jokes, but it was still a bit of a culture shock. She'd had very limited experience with truly pre-industrial societies on Earth -- Africa got cell phone service and she'd seen mud huts with satellite receivers -- and almost all of her time away from the US had been in war-torn areas and refugee camps, which had their own attendant difficulties. Here, however, everyone was safe, content, and very happy to see their visitors. Especially Jonathan, who was immediately mobbed by a posse of little boys and girls shouting "Yoni!" and dragged off among shouts for candy and playtime. Nancy'd never seen him _smile_ , let alone laugh, and the change was enough to give someone whiplash even if they hadn't overheard him tearing someone from Zoology into shreds that morning.

"I am perhaps not the only one who finds leaving Atlantis to be... freeing," Teyla said as she watched Colonel Sheppard greet some of the Athosians with far less reserve than Nancy had seen from him so far. "Come, let me introduce you to Charin. She has been our village healer for many generations."

Primary care on the mainland was, at least, about what she'd expected it to be. Operating in separate tents, the two of them worked through a list of complaints great and small in addition to plain old check-ups, especially for the very young and the surprising number of expectant women. They'd been told over and over again about how important reproduction was in this galaxy, how hard it was to even hit replacement rate, but it was still striking to see it first hand and she maybe felt a little guilty that she'd intentionally done everything in her power to avoid having her own children while living in safety. It wasn't rational, but that didn't mean anything.

Jonathan sent her over a few of the teenage girls who were either too embarrassed to be seen by him or, Nancy suspected, those who very much wanted to be seen by him (for reasons that had nothing to do with health). In return, she sent over the dental patients, since she still hadn't quite gotten comfortable with that part of the training.

They finished up pretty quickly -- even with the doctor visits being monthly, the lines weren't that long -- and then it was time for lunch, which was a community thing and, Nancy suspected, something of an event with Teyla there. Colonel Sheppard was also a focus of attention, especially among the teenagers and adults, while Jonathan was far more typically reserved and took his food and sat further away from the cooking area. Nancy took a chance and sat down near him; she had been meeting people and answering questions all day -- when she wasn't asking them for diagnostic purposes -- and she could handle a comfortable silence right about now.

"My first meal outside the city," she said as she looked over the contents of her plate. It was more like an oblong pasta dish with curved sides, heavy even without the vegetables and meat and pita-like bread that had been piled on to it by one of the cooks. The whole thing looked a lot like the gyro special from the Greek diner she'd gone to back in Cambridge except without the french fries or tzatziki and none of it looked very exotic at all.

"I think we may have given them the tomato plants," Jonathan said a minute later as he carefully picked the tomatoes out of his food and placed them on the side of his plate. The Athosians had knives and spoons but no forks and eating with your fingers was apparently acceptable. "Weir and McKay agreed to anything if it got the tubs out of the hallways."

Nancy had already heard enough to know that tomatoes growing in the hallway didn't even rate on the ridiculous meter.

The tomatoes, for the record, were awesome -- like the sweetest heirloom tomatoes from a greenmarket. If she were on better terms with Jonathan, she'd have asked for his. But she wasn't and he didn't say another word until the first wave of kids found them.

They headed back to Atlantis a few hours later, Nancy again in the shotgun seat because she hadn't yet gotten a chance to see Atlantis from on high.

"Oh my god," she gasped when it appeared over the horizon, the sun reflecting brilliantly off of its spires and heights. They'd seen pictures on Earth, of course, probably taken from a jumper just like this. But, like so much else of what they'd been told about, it paled before the real thing.

"Not a bad view," Colonel Sheppard agreed with not a little bit of pride. Teyla smiled at him indulgently. Nancy thought their obvious fondness both interesting and heartening in the same way it had been to see the less formal side of people so close to the city's center of power -- Sheppard in particular, since her only experiences with him had been purely professional and usually before or after he and Major Lorne had been hashing something out with Carson. Atlantis was different, yes, but she really didn't want to work on a military base even if it was in another galaxy.

After a quick tour -- "I feel like it," Sheppard airily told the concerned engineer watching their flight from the control room -- they descended back into the city almost with a sigh.

There were several duffels that had to be brought back down to Medical, in addition to items that had to be removed from their personal packs. It had all been already loaded into the jumper when she'd arrived, but hell if she was letting Jonathan carry it all back down. She grabbed a couple before he could and hurried to chase after him as he'd already taken the rest and headed down the ramp by the time she'd shouldered her backpack.

She called after him, but he didn't hear her -- a pair of engineers were doing something very noisy to a jumper on the other side of the hangar and she could barely hear Teyla talking to Colonel Sheppard next to her. "Yoni!"

 _That_ got him to turn around and wait. Unauthorized use of a nickname was overly familiar, she knew, and he was unlikely to let it pass, but it was for his own good.

"First," she began as she caught up, "I don't have cooties and it's a little late to be embarrassed to be seen with me. Second, you still have flowers behind your ears and I'm going to take a wild guess and hypothesize that that's not a look you want to share with the rest of the city."

Jonathan's glare softened a little -- only a little -- and he put the bags he was carrying down and removed the pale pink flowers from behind his ears, tucking them into his shirt pocket. "Thank you," he said.

"Aw, I was hoping nobody would say anything," Colonel Sheppard said as he and Teyla caught up. "They make you look sunny, Doc."

"They make him look sallow," Nancy retorted. "He's an autumn, not a summer."

Jonathan muttered something and picked up his bags again, but he did wait for her and they returned to Medical together.

When they arrived, Carson looked a little surprised, but whether it was because they'd shown up together or because one of them hadn't come storming back alone, she didn't know.


End file.
